Celin Smith is tech Geek and developer at Xicom. She loves to learn new things and share the experience. A passionate writer & writes current affair in web technology and shares upcoming trends & news.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proving to be the most revolutionary technology in recent time that would completely change the way world is working now. AI has the potential to reinvent everything from the nature of work to our modes of communication and transportation. AI would also make a large number of current skills and jobs redundant while opening avenues for new skills. During 2018, we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the platforms, tools and applications based on Machine learning and artificial intelligence. These technologies are impacting the software and internet industry a lot and they are even transforming the verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, legal, agriculture and automobile.

We will continue to see the advancement of ML and AI related technologies and their application in app development in 2019 and beyond. Leading companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Facebook are investing heavily in the research and development of AI, which will ultimately benefit the whole ecosystem around AI technology and it will bring AI much more closer to the masses and average consumers.

With increasing awareness and capability of AI among various stakeholders, including governments, academia, tech buyers, vendors and investors, it is expected that now is the time when AI will go beyond experiments and will become the mainstay in the business arena. Hence as we enter into 2019 now, we can say that AI has arrived on the world scene and what a great way to enter with so many AI trends started to impact all of our lives.

In this article, I will discuss about what 2019 will hold for this game-changing technology.

The merger of AI, Blockchain, cloud, and IoT:
You take any Mobile App Creator in the industry, they have been already waiting for such kind of convergence to take place in the market soon. Imagine a future software stack comprise of AI, IoT and Blockchain running on the cloud. You can easily guess how many benefits these technologies can bring if they come together. IoT devices will have the interface with which consumers and other stakeholders will interact. Voice enabled and always connected devices like Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, will augment the customer experience and ultimately become the main point of contact with businesses. AI framework such as Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing will be the translation layer between the sensor on one end and the deciphering technology on the other end. Blockchain like decentralized databases will act as the immutable core for managing contacts, transactions between various parties in the supply chain and consumer requests. These applications will run on cloud with the requirement of huge computational resources.

Development of AI-optimized hardware and software:
In 2019, as availability of AI will become more pervasive, it will require major shifts in the design of hardware and software that runs it. This year we will see exponential growth in hardware and software designed and optimized to run AI. Size and scale of data in AI applications is increasing rapidly and the algorithms becoming more complex hence we will see a huge demand for specialized chipsets that can effectively run AI applications with minimum latency. Venture capitalists are showing great interest in companies developing GPUs, NPUs and the like. End-user hardware such as smart assistants and wearables will also see a huge increase in their demand. Old software processes and paradigms will also continue to be challenged. Edge computing will make sure that higher processing power is more locally available to AI powered applications.Machine Learning Platforms:
Nowadays, computers can also learn easily and they can become incredibly intelligent. Machine Learning or ML is a sub discipline of computer science and a branch of AI. Its main aim is to develop various techniques that allow computers to learn. By providing APIs, algorithms, development and training tools, big data, applications and other machines, ML platforms are gaining more and more attention every day. Right now they are mainly being use for classification and predictions. Major companies selling ML platforms include Google, Amazon, Fractal Analytics, Microsoft, H2O.ai, Adext, Skytree and SAS. Adext is the first and only audience management tool in the world right now that applies real AI and machine learning to digital advertising and it can find the most profitable audience or demographic group for any particular ad.

Virtual Agents:
In recent years, we have seen a new trend in which many businesses whether small or large, have started using Chatbots. Chatbot is an AI powered tool that could answer your website’s visitors’ questions, create sales leads and help customers check out easily. In 2019, we will see even more advances in AI powered customer service as companies won’t just be using chatbots but they will be creating virtual agents – with a face and personality – that can handle lot more customer service tasks for your business. For example, take the case of Autodesk’s virtual agent Ava. It has a female face and voice and it speaks as a true representative of the company. In 2019, expect to see even more companies investing in AI powered virtual agents having capability to do conversations with the customers.

Facial Recognition:
Facial recognition technology is becoming popular rapidly and it would continue to do so in 2019 too. Facial recognition is a form of artificial intelligence application that helps in identifying a person using their digital image or patterns of their facial features. This year we will see an increase in the usage of this technology with even more accuracy and reliability. You must be knowing about the Facebook’s Deepface program that is used to easily tag your friends and family in your photos. The Apple’s iPhoneX smartphone is already using facial recognition as a digital password. We are moving towards more and more personalization hence from your shopping experience to advertising, Facial recognition is going to be used more and more for biometric identification. Other uses would also be on the rise like payment processing through security checks as well as for law enforcement i.e. in early detection and prevention of crime. This technology can also be used for healthcare purposes as well i.e. to follow through clinical trials as well as medical diagnostic procedures.

Speech Recognition:
Amazon’s Alexa was already a big hit with customers in 2018, making it easier for people to search for information on the web and do things around the home hence we expect to see lot more speech recognition tools in 2019 and beyond. As per reports, about 66 million people in US are projected to be using speech or voice recognition technology by the end of this year. Therefore, many companies are planning to come into this field now. This year, Sony and others have already launched TVs that can be controlled by voice. LG, Whirlpool and Delta have also added Alexa’s voice recognition skills to help people control everything in their homes from microwaves to refrigerator. In 2019 and beyond, we will see even more companies and products adopting speech recognition technology.

Neural networks:
Artificial Neural networks emulate human brain. They store all data in a digital format- sensory, text or time and use it to classify and group the information. For example, humans can recognize handwriting easily but in order to teach an algorithm we have to feed it with vast amounts of handwritten data to recognize patterns in it. There is already a huge demand of neural networks in robotics, to improve order fulfillment, to predict in stock market, and diagnosis of medical problems or even to compose amazing music. In 2019, the neural network technologies and algorithms will improve more which will enable this type of AI to become even more sophisticated as better training methods and networks are developed. Neural networks are also backbone of deep learning which are the powerful set of algorithms that can be used for image processing, speech recognition or to process natural languages. Neural networks are also helpful in autonomous vehicles or fraud detection and even to detect diseases.

Cyber Defense:
Hackers and cybercriminals are continuously targeting cloud infrastructure, software as a service (SaaS) platforms and internet of things devices and it has become a real menace for business owners. Artificial intelligence will make it much easier to prevent and fight off cyber threats and hackers in 2019 and beyond. Actually to do that we don’t have many other options. Several companies like Darktrace are already using AI and ML to detect online hackers in real time and to identify cyber threats even before they arise and spread. AI can pick up on the indicators of any abnormal activity and defend your system and solution early on i.e. much before the threat becomes uncontrollable.

Conclusion
In concluding remark, we can say that Artificial Intelligence trend is not going to slow down anytime soon in near future. Rather the growth of AI technologies and devices will continue to rise in 2019 and even after that as the focus of everyone else is now shifting towards the new technologies and applications in the industry which can solve many inherent problems related to customers and general public. AI will lead the race in this space and will help the companies to achieve their targets and in providing excellent customer service to their customers.
Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2019 5:24 AM
App Development
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app developer
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Artificial Intelligence
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Cyber Defense
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